Deputy Head
Deputy Head –Dr. Om Prakash
Deputy Head –Dr. Om Prakash
Dr. Om Prakash is working as Deputy Head and Associate Professor, at Symbiosis Centre for Climate Change and Sustainability (SCCCS), Symbiosis International (Deemed University), Lavale, Pune. Over the past 22-years. Dr. Prakash has been doing cutting edge interdisciplinary research in the area of anaerobic microbiology, climate change, greenhouse gas emission, environmental pollutants remediation and public and environmental health. Before Joining Symbiosis, he worked as Curator of anaerobic facility of National Centre for Microbial Resource (NCMR) National Centre for Cell Science (NCCS) Pune for 11-years.
He earned his M. Sc. and Ph.D. Degree in Microbiology from Dr. RML Avadh University Ajodhya and University of Delhi respectively and received 5-years postdoctoral training in Anaerobic Microbiology and Environmental health from Florida State University, USA and Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, USA. Currently, he is working as elected Chairman of the Subcommittee on Methanogenic Archaea of International Committee on Systematics of Prokaryotes (ICSP) U.K. along with 10-other experts (members) from 8-different countries. In 2016, he received Senior-INSA visiting fellow award in Microbial Ecology to develop Indo-Israel bilateral collaboration in wastewater treatment and coordinated Global Antimicrobial Resistance (AMR) project from the Indian side participated by 47 laboratories from 20-countries. Received ICMR, HRD-Long-term Fellowship for the year 2016-17 in human-gut ecology- and conducted work on bottom up-proteomics in collaboration with Translational Science Laboratory, College of Medicine, Florida State University, USA. In 2017, Dr Prakash received the best mentor award from Florida Agriculture and Mechanical University (FAMU) and “Young Achiever Award ” from Institute of Agricultural Science (IAS) BHU. He has contributed >80 articles in high-impact microbiological journals of national and international repute with >3500 citations. At NCCS he brought 4 projects from DBT and DST in solid waste management, climate change, and bioenergy. His project in global climate change and bioenergy generation was highlighted by DBT on its main page on World Environment Day (2021). He initiated the Microbiome Bank of NCMR, maintained more than 30 species of obligate anaerobes from different niches and discovered the first anoxic benzene degrader (Geobacter daltonii) with uranium and iron reducing ability. Dr Prakash has initiated Indian Landfill Leachate Network Initiative (ILLNI) project (volunteer), >35 Indian Institutes and Universities across the nation are participating in this initiative to understand the role of Indian landfill in climate change, environmental contamination and public health. His team developed a high-throughput cultivation method for not yet-cultured Bacteria and Archaea from environmental samples for low budget microbiology laboratories along with NEERI-Nagpur and University of Illinois, USA.
Till date, he has mentored >45 U.G. and P.G. students (B. Tech, M-Tech, and M.Sc.) from Florida State University, USA, Florida Agriculture and Mechanical University (FAMU), USA, and NCMR-NCCS, Pune for their short-term dissertation and received the best mentor award from FAMU, USA. Dr. Prakash is currently serving as a member of Editorial Board of Journal of Environmental Biology, Indian Journal of Microbiology and Microsphere and Guest editor Frontier in Microbiology. He is also working as Executive board members of Indian Network for Soil Contamination Research (INSCR), microbiology literacy forum and United Science Foundation (USF).
